Chicago Sun-Times, Letters
FAX: 312-321-2566

Originally submitted: October 11th, 2006

Before Sen. Debbie Halvorson (D-Crete) tries to mandate the human papiloma virus (HPV) vaccine for 11-12 year-old girls, we ask her to investigate Merck’s Gardasil® vaccine package insert (Lawmaker champions caner vaccine, reveals her story,” Sept. 22). According to this insert, there is no evaluation of Gardasil® for cancer-causing properties or genotoxicity. Adverse reactions range from arthritis and athsma to gastroenteritis and pelvic-inflammatory disease.

No safety studies exist on Gardasil’s ingredients singly, combined or synergystically with other vaccines. Neurotoxic aluminum is an ingredient and was used in the clinical trials’ placebo. There is lack of identity of trial subjects, country and race with only a 4-year follow-up. There are no accounts for 7 deaths out of 17 subjects who died in the trials. There are no studies of Gardasil® on male fertility although male subjects were tested.

It is unknown if Gardasil® can cause fetal harm when injected into a pregnant woman or if it affects reproductive capacity. Birth abnormalities appeared within 30 days of mother’s vaccination. Within 30 days, a higher number of breast-feeding babies had acute respiratory illness compared to babies whose mothers received placebo.

As with all vaccines, culture medium ingredients are secret. Our state-wide organization encourages Sen. Hallvorson to find HPV vaccine truth.

Barbara Alexander Mullarkey, President
Illinois Vaccine Awareness Coalition
708-848-0116

ILLINOIS VACCINE AWARENESS COALITION

Re: Declaration of Exemption by Illinois Department of Public Health which bypasses Mercury-Free vaccine Law – Public Act 094-0514 scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2006.

Barbara Mullarkey, IVAC’s president asks the question, “Can an unelected state bureaucrat overturn an Illinois law that eliminates vaccines’ thimerosal, a neurotoxic mercury ingredient?

On New Year’s Day, IDPH’s director Eric Witaker issued Declaration of Exemption to continue vaccines’ toxic doses of mercury bypassing PA 094-0514, the Mercury-Free Vaccine Act. IDPH also claims a supply shortage of mercury free vaccines.

The minutes of a June 29, 2005 meeting of American Academy of Pediatrics’ Illinois chapter, with IDPH employees present, shows that an exemption was in the works two months before the law was signed. The pediatric group claims credit for a clause in HB511 allowing IDPH to bypass the law. It includes a disease outbreak, vaccine supply shortage or an economic emergency– if IDPH could not fund $2.00 per vaccine added cost for mercury free vaccines. They also blocked a provision requiring doctors to distribute information about thimerosal to patients.

Sen. Don Harmon (D-Oak Park), one of HB 511’s co-sponsors with Sen. Mattie Hunter and Rep. Kurt Granberg, was quoted in a news release from Prairie Collaborative for Immunization Safety (PCIS). He said, “I am disappointed that we’ve flipped the safety valve of the exemption in the first year…There was clearly a breakdown in communication between IDPH and the medical community and the pharmaceutical companies, and we’ll have to determine whether that breakdown can be remedied legislatively.”

Any discarded vaccine with thimerosal is considered hazardous waste and has to be carefully disposed. PCIS’s director, David Ayoub, M.D. Says, “It appears that the IDPH has an alternative disposal—directly into the arms of its citizens.”

Many researchers and parents link thimerosal (49.6 percent ethyl mercury) in vaccines to neurological disorders and increased children’s autism. Parents nationwide are concerned that 1 in 166 children are autistic. In 2004-2005, Illinois had 8,076 autistic children, ages 3-21. The number of autism teachers rose from 30 in 1999 to 180 in 2004. It cost $150 million dollars or $18,800 per child to educate Illinois children with autism per year and $25,000 per child if institutionalized. A family’s cost for caring for a child with autism costs $60,000-80,000 per year and lifetime costs can exceed $2 million.

Parents need to ask their doctors for vaccines’ package insert to determine if thimerosal is still in the recommended vaccines. Illinois provides vaccination exemptions based on personal religious beliefs for grammar, high school and college students.

We mourn the untimely death of Liz Birt, IVAC’s friend and lawyer, who died Wednesday, December 29 after a car accident in Aspen, Colorado. We will miss her guidance as will her children, Sarah, Matthew and Andrew.

Her Illinois memorial will be Saturday, January 14, 11:00am, at St. Francis Xavier Church, 524 9th Street, Wilmette.

Liz, a Wilmette resident, was a courageous woman whose love, for her son Matthew suffering from autism, propelled her into national issues. As attorney for Congress’ Committee on Government Reform, she uncovered vital information about vaccines’ mind-altering thimerosal, the mercury drug, which some scientists link to autism. She co-authored a 2003 Congressional report, “Mercury in Medicines: Are We Taking Unnecessary Risks?”

David Kirby’s Evidence of Harm focused on Liz, Sallie Bernard and Lyn Redwood, dubbed the “Mercury Moms,” mothers of sons with autism–Matthew, Bill and Will. Together these three mothers formed a coalition for Safe Minds. Liz, also, funded the nonprofit organization, Medical Intervention for Autism.

On January 4, 2006, IVAC posted the following tribute on NationalAutismAssociation.org:

As Liz’s father wrote, we whom Liz also touched, are devastated and desolate.” As she mirrored his love and devotion, she reflected all of our passions for children.

Liz, lawyer for Illinois Vaccine Awareness Coalition, generously gave her time to legally get IVAC off the ground, for which we are grateful. Personally, I will miss her frank discussions regarding vaccine decision-makers.

May we honor Liz’s memory by continuing her mission for vaccine truth and justice in ourselves, our elected officials, and in decision-making bureaucrats. May we support scientists, doctors and health professionals who pursue, with an open mind, the cause and cure of autism.

Barbara Alexander Mullarkey

Wendy Callahan’s 7-year-old daughter stopped breathing after her 2-month vaccinations. Her 8-year-old son suffered three months of seizures after vaccinations at 15-moths-old. Both are now healthy.

On July 27,2005, this mother brought attention to vaccines’ adverse reactions by erecting a billboard, stating, “Love Them. Protect Them…Never Inject Them.” This bright yellow billboard with red and orange lettering, went up in Ocala, Florida on U.S. 441 North. It’s on the east side in the 4500 block.

The rest of the billboard reads: “Adverse reactions to vaccines may cause: Chronic Ear Infection - Autism - Seizures - SBS (Shaken Baby Syndrome) - SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome).

The billboard, paid by donations, cost $900 for the first month and will cost $400 for each additional month. For more information:VaccineTruth.com

from NVIC News

Recently-reported data regarding flu vaccines only show a modest ability to prevent flu or its complications in people over 65. On September 21, 2005 London’s The Lancet, published an early online study of 37 years of worldwide flu vaccine studies of the Cochrane Vaccine project.

Dr. Tom Jefferson, a Rome researcher, stated, “‘the runaway 100 percent effectiveness that’s touted by proponents was nowhere to be seen. There is wild overestimation of the impact of these vaccines in the community…What you see is that marketing rules the response to influenza, and scientific evidence comes fourth and fifth. Vaccines may have a role, but they appear to have a modest effect. The best strategy to prevent the illness is to wash your hands.’”

from NVIC News

The International Journal of Toxicology (August 2005) reveals high rates of shingles in Americans since 1995 when the Centers for Disease Control recommended chickenpox vaccine for children. Shingles results in three times as many deaths and five times the number of hospitalizations as chickenpox.

Gary S. Goldman,the study’s author, relates that CDC epidemiologists hope that “‘any possible shingles epidemic can be offset by treating adults with a shingles vaccine. Using a shingles vaccine to control shingles epidemics in adults would likely fail because adult vaccination programs have rarely proved successful.’”

It was thought shingles increased with age as older peoples’ immune system declined. Goldman’s research shows this increase results from little contact with young children who have chickenpox.

Adults’ occasional contact with children who have chickenpox naturally suppresses shingles and helps to prevent shingles’ reactivation. Goldman’s analysis indicates that the chickenpox vaccine effectiveness depends on natural boosting and as chickenpox declines, the vaccine’s effectiveness declines.

Goldman states,”‘…the universal varicella (chickenpox) vaccination program in the U.S. will nearly eradicate this natural boosting mechanism and will leave our population vulnerable to shingles epidemics…There appears to be no way to avoid a mass epidemic of shingles lasting as long as several generations among adults.’”

In the medical journal, Vaccine (May 9,2005), Goldman presents a cost-benefit analysis of the universal chickenpox vaccination program. During a 50-year time span, he estimates an additional 14.6 million shingles cases among adults younger than 50 years. This medical cost burden amounts to $4.1 billion for that time period or $80 million yearly.

Goldman served eight years as a research analyst with the Varicella Active Surveillance Project, funded by the CDC, for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services.

Illinois Vaccine Awareness Coalition

“A Stolen Life” by Marge Grant
(Precautionary Books, 2005) 172-page paperback

Contact: www.dptshot.com or

DPTSHOT
c/o Marge Grant
915 South university Avenue
Beaver Dam, WI 53916

In “A Stolen Life,” Marge grant graphically describes life with Scottie, her 43-year-old son and his severe reactions to childhood vaccinations. It is a mother’s story of day-to-day struggles of parents coping with their son’s vaccine-induced brain insults. Scottie’s vaccinations resulted in mental retardation, seizures, profound spasticity, quadriplegic and nonambulatory conditions.

Scottie’s mother felt that if he had died in 1961, the diagnosis would have been, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) with cause unknown. Her message about her son’s vaccine injuries: “When it happens to your child, there are no benefits, and the risks are 100 percent.

After his shots, Scottie experienced nocturnal seizures, piercing screams, intense lethargy, startle reflex, irritability, decreased appetite, disinterest in toys and slight, jerky movements.

Some doctors deny vaccines’ severe reactions because what will they do if it’s true. However, Mayo Clinic doctor, led by J. Gordon Millichap, M.D., concluded that Scottie suffered severe brain injury from injected vaccinations. His pediatrician gave him Quadrigen, a diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus (DPT)/polio shot at four, five and six months. Parke Davis (now a unit of Pfizer) added the preservative, benzethorium chloride or Phemoral, to the vaccine.

In 1969, the Grants sued. Marge writes: “To take on this giant pharmaceutical company proved to be an experience second to none. We walked into the situation knowing nothing of the cozy relationships that existed and the traditionally well-traveled two-way streets between the vaccine industry and the government regulatory agencies,”

Even though the Grants lost their court case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, Scottie’s mother testified before various Congressional committees. In 1989, she represented parents on the Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines. She discovered conflicts of interest among vaccine bureaucrats. Even the institutes of medicine, allegedly independent, accepts funding from the vaccine and insurance industries.

Vaccine awareness began nationally in April 1982, when Lea Thompson, an investigative reporter from an NBC , Washington, D.C. affiliate, aired, “DPT: Vaccine Roulette, Scottie’s story. Scottie appeared on Chicago’s Phil Donahue TV show on December 9. 1982.

In Wisconsin, Scottie’s mother helped pass, in 1983, a personal conviction waiver that parents could sign for childhood vaccination exemption. It is mandatory that patients’ medical records now contain manufacturer name, date and lot number of every vaccine. The Grants’ pediatrician neglected to record this crucial information and caused them to lose their court case,

Scottie’s mother protested against the national Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which she said would shield vaccine manufacturers from liability. She felt there would be no incentive to produce and market the safest and most effective vaccines. No penalty exists for doctors who fail to report vaccines’ adverse reactions.

Pharmacist Kristine Severyn, R.Ph., Ph.D., founder of the Ohio Parents for Vaccine Safety, writes the Foreword. She states: “Unfortunately, the prevailing attitude that a few children can be sacrificed for the good of society guides the policy of the U.S. Public Health Service.

“Until you, or one of ‘your own’ (as Jim Grant said) are injured by a vaccine, you don’t realize how much information is withheld and distorted by drug companies and government bureaucrats in their goal to achieve 100 percent vaccination rates. Two such practices are, first, inflating disease incidence: data to mislead the public into thinking a disease is more common than it really is, and second, minimizing reports on adverse reactions to vaccines.”

Illinois Vaccine Awareness Coalition

“Evidence of Harm” by David Kirby
(St. Martin’s Press, 2005) 441-page hard cover

This book explores the controversy of autism epidemic linked to vaccines’ thimerosal (49.6 percent ethyl mercury). It chronicles the searches of three “Mercury Moms:” Sallie Bernard, Liz Birt and Lyn Redwood to find the autism cause and cure for their sons, Bill, Matthew and Will. The three mothers take on science, business and government to find answers for their sons’ sudden mental and physical decline. The mothers form Sensible Action For Ending mercury-Induced Neurological Disorders (Coalition for Safe Minds). They expose the secret vaccine workings of the Centers for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration, Institutes of Medicine and Congress.

This book shows government and medicine bureaucracy’s denials of “evidence of harm.” Unfortunately, author Kirby, a New York Times contributor, neglects the major media’s resistance to investigate and to air this heated controversy. Autism now affects 1 in 166 or approximately 450,000 U.S. children ages 0-18.

Early on, Kirby lists vaccines’ components, sounding “like something from a poison factory manual:” aborted human fetal tissue diploid cells, aluminum hydroxide, aluminum phosphate, ammonium sulfate, calf serum, casein from pig pancreas, chick embryo, fetal bovine serum, fetal rheus monkey lung cells, monkey kidney cells, neomycin (antibiotic), phenoxyethanol (antifreeze), streptomycin (antibiotic), washed sheep red blood cells.

Kirby mentions University of Kentucky’s Boyd Haley, a mercury researcher for over a decade. His studies with mouse neuronal cells in culture show a shocking synergistic effect . When he mixed thimerosal with aluminum and neomycin, survival rates plummeted, after twenty-four hours, to less than 10 percent. With thimerosal-testosterone combination, cells died “‘a hundred times faster than those exposed to testosterone alone.’” Estrogen had a protective effect on cells.

In other studies, Haley ‘”discovered that mercury-laden shots were tenfold to hundredfold more toxic than those without thimerosal.’” He found that the preservative-free MMR vaccine ‘”was as toxic as the thimerosal-containing vaccines’” but could not determine the cause.

On June 21, 2000, CDC’s Dr. Thomas Verstraten announced: “‘Researchers found statistically significant associations between thimerosal and neurodevelopmental disorders.’” This verified one of the Mercury Moms theory that two vaccines with more thimerosal, the Hib vaccine, added in 1988 and the hepatitis-B vaccine, added in 1991, contributed to high mercury levels in children.

One of vaccines’ most passionate supporter remains Paul Offit, M.D., chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. His reaction to the mercury/ autism link is best characterized by his own words to Kirby:

“‘Frankly, until thimerosal is out of all vaccines, nobody’s going to be comfortable, which is sad…I think we scared people unnecessarily. And you did more harm than good in sort of, quote/unquote, allowing the parent to be fully informed. There’s no politically correct way to say this, but being fully informed is not always the best thing. You can take that out of context and make me look like a jerk, but you know what I’m saying. You need to be appropriately informed. You need to have information in a context. That’s what I think gets lost in this.’”

Kirby refers to Merck, a vaccine manufacturer, as Offit’s business partner. Offit was a Merck consultant and patent holder for the rotavirus vaccine which netted he and his partner $350,000 in grant money. Merck Vaccine Division, also, purchased 20,000 copies of his vaccine book for distribution to doctors’ offices. Offit sat on CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) which recommends vaccines that end up on states’ mandatory list for children’s school attendance.

Kirby ends his book on a politically somber note. He relates how Merck and GlaxoSmithKline have aggressively marketed pediatric vaccines to other countries. He tells that Xinhua, the Chinese News Agency, reported that autism had suddenly skyrocketed to 1.8 million children in 2004. One researcher estimated that autism was growing at 20 percent annually. Other countries are also reporting high autism numbers.Kirby ends his book with two questions, ‘”What if the profitable export of our much vaunted medical technology has led to the poisoning of hundreds of thousands of children? What then?’”

Oak Park, Illinois

Originally printed in: Oak Leaves on Wednesday, July 6th, 2005

“Polio vaccine, now 50, had Oak Park doubters,”(April 27) brought back fond memories of Herbert Ratner, M.D., my mentor and Oak Park’s health director from 1947-1972.

Dr. Ratner played a key role in 1955, a turning point in American medicine.

I visited Ratner’s home on two occasions when Michele Carbone, M.D.,Ph.D., was present. On May 21, 1997, Ratner had me bring from his basement refrigerator and give to Dr. Carbone two unopened vials of the Salk polio vaccine. Ratner had kept the refrigerated vaccine vials for more than 40 years.

On Feb. 17, 1998, Ratner’s three daughters invited Carbone, his four colleagues, lawyer, court reporter and me to meet at Ratner’s home. This was two months after Ratner’s death on Dec. 6, 1997, at 90 years old. One of his daughters gave Carbone the box of five Salk polio vaccine vials.

Since 1955, Ratner had refrigerated all of the vaccine vials. He knew that there was live polio virus in the supposedly killed Salk vaccine. In the 1960’s, he found out that the vaccine also contained the SV40 monkey virus. In the 1990’s, Loyola’s Carbone implicated the SV40 virus in cancer tumors, called mesothelioma. Drs. Ratner and Carbone had met at a National Institutes of Health workshop Jan. 27-28, 1997.

In the 1950’s, Cutter Laboratories took the blame for deaths and paralysis following injection of the polio vaccine. However, Paul Offit, M.D., in the April 2005 New England Journal of Medicine, has implicated five drug companies in the disaster: Cutter, Eli Lilly, Parke-Davis, Pitman-Moore and Wyeth. Each company had difficulties with formaldehyde-inactivation of the polio virus. In a 1960 lawsuit, the jury learned that Wyeth produced only one vaccine lot that paralyzed and caused deaths of several children in the Northeast.

Ratner felt Jonas Salk’s vaccine harmed thousands of children due to incomplete research and rush to market. Basil O’Connor, president of National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, insisted the Salk vaccine be released for publicity purposes on April 12, 1955. As President Franklin Roosevelt’s lawyer, he wanted the release to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the president’s death. Thus, the vaccine review committee had no time to analyze the vaccine trial data.

Polio appeared to decrease after the vaccine introduction because U.S. Public Health Service, at the time adopted more stringent criteria for polio reporting. Cases which formerly would have been reported as polio were now reported as meningitis.

Ratner gave me an article from his friend Max Marshall, Ph.D., chairman of the department of microbiology at University of California Medical Center. “The Salk Vaccine” appeared in the November 1955 California Medicine and read: “Are we so socialized that we must argue that saving five children at the expense of two who are killed, who otherwise would have lived, is a legitimate move? There are persons who argue and who are even surprised that there is disagreement. All proper medical men and a large number of others will realize that this outlook, whatever its social propriety, impropriety, or inhumanity, sets up a dictator, a man whose decisions are sacrosanct, the man who decides to kill some to save others.”

Barbara Mullarkey, (president Illinois Vaccine Awareness Coalition)

Oak Park, Illinois

Originally printed in: Oak Leaves on Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Barbara Mullarkey’s July 6 letter was a contribution toward an understanding of the hidden problems of the 1965 Salk polio vaccine program.

When he brought home a small, cardboard box that year, containing nine vials of the new Salk vaccine, Herbert Ratner, M.D., director of the Oak Park Health Department, did not know that they were contaminated with cancer-causing Simian Virus 40 (SV40) from the green monkey liver tissue on which the vaccine had been grown. No one, at that time, yet knew of the monkey virus.

His concern in 1955 was rather than from his analysis of epidemiological data he had become aware that the supposedly killed virus Salk vaccine contained dangerous live polio virus which, in various places around the country including Illinois, was causing polio in vaccinated children, and that this information was not reported by the press.

Dr. Ratner’s purpose in bringing the vials to his home was to get inconvertible proof that the Salk vaccine contained live polio virus. He and two other local physicians, Dr. Gregory White and Dr. John Kelly, planned to administer the vaccine to themselves at intervals to determine if their antibodies were rising in response to live virus in the vaccine. Dr. Ratner and his two fellow physicians had to call off the experiment as too risky, however, when preliminary tests they did on themselves showed that Dr. Ratner himself lacked antibodies to the most deadly strain of the polio virus.

At that time, Dr. Ratner was editor of The Bulletin of the American Association of Public Health Physicians. So, although he had not been able to go through with his experiment to demonstrate that there was live polio virus in the Salk vaccine, he was able to publish a critique in the November and December issues of The Bulletin, setting forth the epidemiological evidence that the Salk vaccine had been causing the disease it was intended to prevent.

The then heads of the government health agencies chose not to respond to Dr. Ratner’s critique; they instead chose to simply ignore it. And soon after his critique appeared, the president of one of the drug companies, which manufactured the vaccine, succeeded in getting Dr. Ratner removed from the editorship by threatening a member of the association’s executive committee with the loss of his job, if the committee did not get rid of Ratner.

In 1960, Dr. Ratner learned that a government researcher, Dr. Bernice Eddy, had discovered evidence of a cancer-causing agent in the Salk vaccine. The agent was soon identified as a monkey virus. Eddy’s superiors ordered her to remain silent about her discovery. When, about that same time, he learned that eight children in Niles had contracted leukemia within several years of having received the 1955 Salk vaccine. Dr. Ratner understood the importance of continuing to hold on to the vials of 1955 vaccine in his refrigerator.

Although they knew by 1960 that there was a cancer-causing monkey virus in the Salk vaccine, the government health agencies allowed the contaminated vaccine to stay on the shelves of pharmacies for another year and a half until a vaccine, believed to be free of the viral contaminant, could be developed. Then they quietly replaced the old stock with the newer version of the Salk vaccine. Neither the nation’s physicians nor the public were told there was a problem with the older vaccine.

In an effort to verify that there was monkey virus in his 1955 Salk vaccine, Dr. Ratner had given vials of his old vaccine to researchers at two separate institutions before finally giving vials to molecular pathologist and soon-to-be-Oak Parker, Dr. Michele Carbone in 1997. Dr.Carbone discovered that there were not one but two strains of SV40 in the 1955 vaccine.

The government cover-ups of problems with the Salk vaccine in 1955 and 1960 make a cautionary tale of what can happen in a democratic society when monetary interests and face-saving win out over standard scientific caution and concern for public safety. “The crass manipulation of the public by establishment professionals in 1955,” Dr. Ratner wrote, “was a turning point in the history of modern medicine.”

What happened at that time is relevant to present day collusion between government health agencies and the pharmaceutical industry and to the laxity of our present laws which allow physicians in the pay of drug companies to serve, despite obvious conflicts of interest, on government committees which evaluate vaccines and other pharmaceuticals.

Helen Ratner Dietz

CONTACT:
Barbara Alexander Mullarkey: president/spokeswoman – 708-848-0116
Sherry Wied: secretary - 847-836-0488

Illinois Vaccine Awareness Coalition appreciates that Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich signed Public Act 094-0614, the Mercury-Free Vaccine Act.

We are indebted to Rep. Kurt Granberg and Senators Mattie Hunter and Don Harmon for shepherding HB511 through both houses. Thanks to co-sponsors: House – 10 Democrats and 1 Republican and Senate – 5 Democrats and 1 Republican. The House vote was 114-0 and the Senate vote was 56-1.

The Mercury-Free Vaccine Act provides:

On July 5, 2005, the Food and Drug Administration released a list of vaccines with thimerosal (49.6 percent ethyl mercury). These vaccines still contain mercury as part of their manufacturing process or as a preservative.

DTaP – Tripedia, Aventis Pasteur, Inc.
DTap-HepB-IPV – Pediarix, GlaxoSmithKline
DT – Aventis Pasteur, Inc
DT – Aventis Pasteur, Ltd.
Td – Massachusetts Public Health
Td - Decavac – Aventis Pasteur, Inc
TT– Aventis Pasteur, Inc.
Hepatitis B – Energix, GlaxoSmithKline
Hepatitis B – Recombivax HB(adult/adolescent available in preservative-free & thimerosal (mercury) containing vaccines;
HepA/HepB – Twinrix – GlaxoSmithKiline
Influenza: ALL INJECTED FLU VACCINES
Japanese Encephalitis – JE-VAC, Biken
Meningococcal – Menomune – Aventis Pasteur, Inc.

According to Barbara Mullarkey, IVAC president, “Many researchers and parents link neurotoxic mercury in vaccine to neurological disorders and increased rate of children’s autism. Parents nationwide are concerned that 1 in 166 children are autistic. In the 1930’s, Eli Lily first produced vaccines’ thimerosal.”

Illinois provides vaccination exemptions based on medical or personal religious beliefs for grammar, high school and college students.

Sun-Times Letters to the Editor

llinois State Board of Education Child Count Figures

Illinois State Board of Education’s Disability Figures

The current day care exemption allows parents to exempt to a vaccine/s if this conflicts with the tenets and practices of a recognized church or religious organization. The Illinois Department of Public Health has advised IVAC that there is no definition for a recognized church or religious organization.SB2011 would change the language of the bill to be in line with the religious exemptions in place for elementary, secondary and college students.. Unfortunately the Rules Committee refuses to take action on this bill and allow it to go to the Senate for a vote.We need to send a message first to this committee and next to our own representatives/senators that our children’s health is not an issue we will tolerate their playing of political games. Please contact these men and let them know you expect them to respect the rights of parents to decide vaccination issues based on your religious beliefs.

Click HERE for More Info.

Click HERE

7/1/02
College Vaccine Religious Exemption
changed to include Personal, Religious Beliefs

Effective October 1, 2001

Click HERE to read DCFS’s statement.

How to Report a Vaccine Reaction

…Print out the Report Form (PDF file) from the VAERS Web Site (www.vaers.org)… by Clicking HERE.

Welcome.

The Illinois Vaccine Awareness Coalition (IVAC) is a grassroots organization based in Oak Park, Illinois, with members throughout our state and in other parts of the US. As the name implies, our goal is to make people aware of any known dangers and risks in vaccinations, along with supplying up-to-date information on vaccines in general. To Navigate through the site, select a Category Button at the top of the page. IVAC supports Illinois legislation allowing parents the freedom of choice when making vaccine decisions for their children.

The information on this Web Site is for educational purposes only and is not to be construed as medical or legal advice. Readers are advised to supplement this information with their own research. The Decision to Vaccinate is Yours and Yours Alone.